Chapter 11: Chapter 8: Revival City Part 2

Zavier had little time to people watch as Anenna had almost taken a running start off the platform. Zavier and Yafu veered in and out of other pedestrian’s paths to keep up with her hectic pace. They went down about four blocks before they reached their destination; a large, wide building with a decent amount of steps and a plethora of stone columns in front of its large open rectangular entrance. To Zavier, it looked similar to a courthouse. The upper stone beam that was supported by the column and connected to the roof had something illegible scrawled on it in large black letters. Suddenly the letter shifted and it read in plain English “Search House”. Zavier was initially confused by the seemingly callow labeling of this giant building, but it made more sense once he realized the lettering was made of the same material as the platforms. He had his translating power on for conversations and the energy stored in the writing of the building must work similarly to show him the intention of what was said in that language. In other words, it was literally a search house.

The interior when they first walked was a broad open room with several platforms taking people up a level to balconies that led to hallways deeper into the recesses of the building. There were also hallways breaking off from this room in ten foot intervals on either side of them. They followed Anenna down one of these hallways and to a door on the left. The door was wooden with a handle made of Nightrock. Anenna got out of the way and motioned for Yafu to blast it. He did for about fifteen seconds before a clicking noise was heard and the door swung open.

“Aye, that was tiring.” Yafu remarked. It seemed like the lock handled soul energy like a tax. Yafu had to discharge a certain amount to unlock the door and use the room. Inside there was a terminal similar to the one on all the platforms except this one had a twenty by twenty board of tiles and an opened book with different board combinations next to scribbled gibberish. Since this was a plain paper book, the writing did not auto-translate for Zavier, but he thought it was a safe assumption that the scribbles were names and the book had to be a type of phone book. Behind this board and book, was a dropbox-like device made of nightrock. Anenna reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. On the paper there was a checkered pattern scribbled into it. Anenna worked efficiently to input this combination into the checkerboard. Once she had finished and double checked her work she again motioned to Yafu. Yafu sighed. He was clearly growing weary of being the soul energy donor. As he blasted it, the turned over tiles glowed and then the platform it was connected to glowed. After a few seconds, and some mild vibrating, the drop box behind the tiles and the board opened and a roll of paper rolled out. The board with the tiles then vibrated and the entire board flipped back to stone. It looked like the nightrock had been pulled to the downward facing part of the board like a heavier liquid filtering to the bottom of a drink.

“What are they?” Yafu asked. Zavier was glad he hesitated to ask so someone else besides him could do it for once.

“Invitations.” Anenna responded.

“I thought we were supposed to find the Regir women immediately and not veer off the course.” Yafu responded, doing a crude Arigo impersonation on the back half of the sentence.

“That’s what I’m doing.” Anenna responded, clearly not amused. “You know how these work, no?” Anenna indicated at the board and waited for Yafu to nod before continuing. “This combination is a secure one to find Ms. Regir. Clearly she presets our combination, along with several others I presume, to spit out her next scheduled event, so that she could be reached there. These invitations will get us into whatever this event is. She will be there. We will give her the letter there. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Yafu sarcastically replied. Walking over to Anenna and holding his hand out Yafu said as he grabbed the paper, “Let me see those.” Anenna was taken aback by the aggressiveness of Yafu and didn’t let go of the paper. She did angle it so Yafu could see. Yafu scanned it quickly, his eyes moving from line to line, and when he got to the end he practically yelped in excitement.

“Oh shit.” a mischievous smile crept along Yafu’s face as he spoke. “This is a very fun ticket to have for tonight.”

“You know this event?” Anenna mused.

“No. But I know the neighborhood.” Yafu said, his smile reaching its climax as it stretched wide across his face. Snapping back to a normal facial composition, Yafu exclaimed, “It’s not for a few hours, so we have time to kill.”

“We need to stay low and out of sight until that time.” Anenna responded, her tone clearly trying to damper down Yafu and retain focus on the mission.

“Great, we can go to my little home.” Yafu said, maintaining his good spirits.

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“We shouldn’t frequent places people might be looking for you.” Anenna countered.

“Don’t worry, no one looks for me there, I’ve avoided the Junta in their capital city for several cycles there.” Yafu’s reasoning seemed enough for Anenna and she relented and let Yafu lead them out of the building.

“What’s the Junta?” Zavier asked.

Yafu stopped and pointed to a few men down the street. Each of these men had dark robes with a large white triangle on both of their sleeves. “They are the Junta. It’s the military group that rules the city. Even though their territory is symbolically only the city here and the End Mountain on the cold planet, you’ve got to watch your back pretty much anywhere in the world if you're on the wrong lists. Those guys are one stars, but the higher ranks are pretty damn scary.”

“Very bold of you to be pointing at people hunting you.” Anenna said disapprovingly.

“Like, I said, one stars,” Yafu answered while gesturing again toward the men, “and my crimes are several cycles old and very minor. There more worried about terrorist groups like the Poison Fang than some guy who was just trying to eat in his youth. Besides, they’re just the bitches of the powerful families here. Right name or seal and you have immunity and a private army at your disposal. As long as I don’t piss off the wrong heir or heiress, I don’t have to fear walking innocuously down the street.” Zavier still kept his head down as they moved past the post of the men.

They reached a building at the edge of a plateau. The building stretched widely along the cliff with several platforms moving in and out of it in a constant stream of travelers. Once inside, Yafu led them to the first open one, entered some coordinates, and started it up. This ride was longer than the last one as they moved closer to the mountain. They finally reached a small outcropping only several hundred feet from the mountain edge. Zavier could see that climbing this mountain any normal way was impossible. The profile of it was almost straight vertical outside of the King’s Carving and there did seem to be any climbing reprieves anywhere on the mountain side. The urban sprawl on this particular rock, about five by five city blocks, looked much worse for wear than the first two blocks Zavier had seen. It appears even alien cities had slums. As they landed and locked into the docket on the rocks edge, Yafu hurriedly motioned them forward. The streets were much narrower here than on the other outcroppings as the buildings were packed much closer together.. Even though Zavier felt like there were less people here, the tight urban design created much more congestion. He got shoved and jostled more than one time as he kept pushing through behind Yafu. They finally arrived at a building adjacent to the tower at center of the rock and Yafu pushed the front door open. Inside was a tavern. There were a couple very old men sitting by a table sipping on drinks. A middle aged woman sat behind the counter. Zaiver felt his throat burn. The dust here was an issue for him. Yafu moved quickly and deliberately to the stairs. There were no floating platforms here. Just old metal stairs. They trudged up six stories to the penultimate floor. Exiting the stairs, Yafu moved a detached piece of wood serving as the door. Inside there was a hallway with three doors on either side. Slumped in front of the nearest door was an old man breathing rather heavily. He was dirty, balding, overweight, and he desperately needed a shave. His face lit up when the three of them entered the hall. Zavier suspected he did not get out much to others.

“Yafu! I almost moved my stuff to your room, you were gone for so long.” The man's voice was the most gravely thing Zaiver had ever heard. It was like he had half a dozen grimly rocks lodged in his throat and was vocalizing through the cracks.

“Just away on business Eeyl, and you don't have any stuff.” The man broke into a cracked smile at this retort from Yafu. His teeth were a very dark shade of gray.

“You've got some beautiful friends.” Eeyl said, giving a look that made Zavier rather uncomfortable. “They aren’t blooders are they?” He looked back at Yafu.

“Not at all, not at all.” Yafu replied in a very friendly tone as he opened the door on the left at the end of the hallway and motioned Zavier and Anenna in. He very quickly shut the door after they had all entered. Zavier was pretty grateful for this expediency.

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